IARTA Conference 2018

Can We Bear to Turn Our Psychotherapeutic Attention Toward Those Who Are Other?

24th November 2018

When it comes to issues of difference, psychotherapists, as a group, regularly fail to employ their power to penetrate the surface, their customary stance of curiosity and their capacity for insight vis-a-vis their own relative disengagement regarding issues of racial, ethnic, sexual, and socioeconomic otherness.

This conference will examine both the resistances to, and the necessity for, our engagement and prioritisation of issues of otherness, difference and diversity. Dr. Hart will describe some of the core anxieties associated with genuine, exploratory dialogue about diversity and argue for the cultivation of a stance of curiosity in relation to difference with an emphasis on noticing and learning from those moments where diversity-related communication in the training, supervisory, and clinical settings seems to break down.

Attention to such breakdowns is portrayed as key to facilitating dialogue that can lead to a more diverse and diversely applied relational psychotherapy. The keynote will include practical suggestions for incorporating inquiry into difference and otherness for both relational psychotherapists and relational training organisations alike.